kairosclerosis
by arkhmknights
Summary: jason sleeps. lian has a nightmare. roy answers questions he is really, really not prepared for at one am without caffeine or alcohol. —jayroy, oneshot. jayroy week 2017.


**title:** kairosclerosis  
 **summary:** jason sleeps. lian has a nightmare. roy answers questions he is really, _really_ not prepared for at one am without caffeine or alcohol. —jayroy, oneshot. jayroy week 2017.  
 **word count:** ~1200  
 **cw:** n/a  
 **prompt:** days 2 & 3—sleep / fathers

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With a little practise, Jason and Roy had gotten remarkably good at playing domestic. It wasn't as difficult as they'd expected. (Jason, really. As Jason had expected.) It was, mostly, a pretty simple set of steps: wake up for breakfast (ideally _before_ midday). Dress the kiddo. School runs. Movie nights. Tea parties. He'd even followed Roy to a PTA meeting or three with only mild snark (an impressive feat of self control which did not go unappreciated). A real classic semi-nuclear family,

But a vigilante is a vigilante, and all it took was a strangled cry from Lian's bedroom at one in the morning to send them both snatching their weapons from beside the bed.

"Li?" Hoarse from sleep but perfectly alert, Roy landed in Lian's doorway with bow in hand. But all he found was a tearful girl with a death grip on her stuffed rabbit, eyes wide and shining in the dark. Roy hit the light switch and threw the room into sharp relief: Roy in loose trousers and a bare chest, Jason a few steps behind (swiftly tucking his knife out of sight in the absence of gun-toting kidnappers, or ninjas, or gun-toting ninja kidnappers), and Lian with her penguin-patterned bedclothes pulled to her chin. "Sweetheart, are you okay?"

Lian sniffled. "I had a bad dream."

Roy dropped his bow and moved in. Lian was all too quick to reach for Roy, clinging to his neck like a monkey as he lifted her and burying her little nose into his shoulder. "I got this," Roy threw over his shoulder, and Jason—white streak splayed at odd angles, eyes hung with dark half-moons—frowned.

"Y'sure?"

"Yeah. Go back to bed."

Jason looked set to argue. But it had been a long, long week of work (or what counted for work in Jason's day-to-day existence) and even he could only handle so many degrees of exhaustion. Besides, any bickering would only distress the kid more. He sighed, ruffled Lian's already sleep-mussed hair and resigned himself back to his and Roy's bed.

"C'mon, squeaker," Roy said, shifting Lian onto his hip as if she weighed nothing and scrubbing his itchy eyes with the heel of his palm. "Let's get you some milk."

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"I'm sorry, daddy."

Her voice was so small and timid that Roy almost missed it over the hum of the coffee machine. He blinked abruptly, blearily, his nodding head snapping to attention—half-asleep at the kitchen counter without meaning to. So maybe it had been a tiring week for the both of them. Whatever. Lian needed him.

"For what, Lian?"

She sat at the edge of the same counter with her legs swinging and a white moustache, warming her fingers on the mug of heated milk. _I AM YOUR FATHER_ , it boasted above a cutesy cartoon scribble of Vader embracing Luke. The sight would've been adorable if not for the circumstances which landed her here. "I got you and Jay up. You're sleepy."

"Hey, hey." Roy looped his arm around Lian's waist, pulling her into him without resistance. "It's not your fault, okay? You didn't do anything wrong. Do you wanna talk about it? The bad dream?"

She shook her head, hair tickling Roy's arm. But he felt her little hand patting his chest where his pulse would be—like a reassurance—and his heart seized a little at the penny-drop. _Oh, baby girl._ "I'm okay, Li," he murmured, low and resolute. "I'm not going anywhere. _We're_ not going anywhere, me or Jay."

"Okay," Lian said, or _probably_ said, but with her face still against him it was muffled and semi-intelligible. They settled that way for a few minutes, Roy rubbing circles between her birdlike shoulder blades as their breathing synced; he grasped his fresh, piping coffee from the machine with a free hand, sipping it carefully. Finally, Lian pulled herself away from Roy's stomach.

"Daddy?"

"Hm?" Roy said automatically, mid-drink.

"Are you gonna marry Jay?"

He choked on his coffee. Spluttered, put the cup down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Uh."

"You love Jay like, like you love mommy, right?" she said, as if Roy were the child and she were explaining something complicated. "So he lives with us and does things like mommy does. Sarah at school says he's like a mommy."

"Uh." Oh. Oh, boy. He cleared his throat, massaging his neck. Not exactly a conversation he'd expected at this hour of the morning. Or ever. A topic he liked to actively avoid, in fact, pulse stuttering and breath going short somewhere around the word _marry_ ; he was still kind of working to wrap his head around his and Jay's arrangement lasting as long as it had, and considering the implications deeper than their surface level was an anxious, chest-squeezing thing. And that wasn't even _touching_ the tangled disaster that was him and Jade, a questionably-dubbed _love story_ he couldn't expect their kid to understand. "It's...Li, things between me and mommy are complicated. Jay's different. He's more like..."

"Like Donna?"

 _From the mouths of babes._ Roy was silent a moment, considering. Something fluttered in his throat and he responded quietly: "Yeah. Maybe he's a little like Donna."

"So…" Lian rubbed her eyes, beginning to drop. "So you should marry Jay. So he stays."

Alright, that was enough. "Back to bed, kiddo," he said, pouring the milk away and wiping Lian's lip. She curled into him, drowsy, as he hoisted her back up and delivered her back to her room, tucking her carefully into bed and rearranging her toys around her. He dropped a quick kiss on her forehead.

"Goodnight, squeaker."

"'Night," Lian mumbled.

He left the nightlight on, casting Lian and her bed and animals and books in a warm glow, and as he moved to flip the main light switch he heard one last, absent mumble: "Jay'd make a good daddy."

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Jason was still awake, barely, cracking an eye open as Roy slipped back into bed. "She okay?"

"'Course. Out like a light."

"Tough kid. She'll be fine."

"You don't have to tell me." Roy propped himself up on an elbow, appraising Jason (his boyfriend, he supposed— _my boyfriend_ —he wasn't used to it, still, those words together) in what little moonlight peered through the chink in the curtains. Months ago, he couldn't have even imagined this expression fitting the sharp, stormy angles of Jason's face: the somnolent ease, eyes half-lidded rather than their usual sharp awareness, hair still stuck at endearing angles. _This_ Jason was a secret, reserved only for he and Lian. Roy didn't think of the F-word, not yet. But this warmth felt remarkably close.

Then Jason raised his eyebrows, which _was_ pretty typical. "Something on my face, Harper?"

"Thought so. Turns out it's just your face."

"Mature fucker, you are."

He snorted, tugging himself closer by the other's waist and tucking his head into the crook of Jason's neck. Jason made a noise of complaint from the back of his throat. "Hey, cold feet."

And Roy grinned wickedly, embrace tightening, pressing his icy toes closer against Jason's legs. "Suffer."

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End file.
